Do You Know What They're Teaching In Your Child's School?

Hot questions, timely topics, timeless principles. Welcome to Townhall Magazine’s August 2013 issue! Check out an exclusive sneak peek of a few stories that made our pages, as we focus on helpful tips for the beginning of your child's school year.

--“Human Trafficking on Your Campus”: Now anyone can be a target--even your child.

--"Who's Teaching the Teachers?": Discover the shocking influence of leftists on those who teach your children.

--""You Might Be At a Liberal College If ... ": From courses to commencement speakers, does your school fit this profile?

--"The Anti-Science Left": Katie Pavlich takes on the anti-science Left in her latest monthly column.

--*Cover Story*: "Understanding the Common Core: Why These 'Standards' Won't Reform American Education": Common Core is yet another opportunity for liberal overreach in the classroom. But some states are catching on. *Scroll down for an exclusive excerpt of the article!*

Remember, our print features are generally 100 percent exclusive ... most won't run in full online!

Excerpted from Townhall Magazine's August cover story, "Understanding the Common Core," by Marybeth Hicks:

Perhaps you heard some encouraging
news about something called the
Common Core State Standards Initiative
(CCSSI), a project of the National
Governor’s Association Center for Best
Practices (NGA) and the Council of
Chief State School Offi cers (CCSSO).
(American education is a veritable
smorgasbord of initialisms. Sorry.)

Launched in 2009 and completed in
2010, the CCSSI is meant to nationalize
the academic expectations for America’s
high school graduates in every state that
adopts them.

According to commoncorestandards.org,
the goal of CCSSI is lofty, indeed:

“The Common Core State Standards
provide a consistent, clear understanding
of what students are expected to learn,
so teachers and parents know what they
need to do to help them. The standards
are designed to be robust and relevant to
the real world, refl ecting the knowledge
and skills that our young people need
for success in college and careers. With
American students fully prepared for
the future, our communities will be best
positioned to compete successfully in the
global economy.”

The name of the game is “college and
career ready”—a phrase that Barack
Obama and Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan repeat so often they must now
utter it in their sleep. The problem, of
course, is that like most progressive
platitudes, this doesn’t really mean
anything, even though CCSSI has been
“validated” by a committee of education
experts and adopted by more than half
of the country—45 states and D.C., to
be exact. (If you guessed that Texas and
Alaska are among the five that have not,
give yourself a gold star.) ...

If you have ever wondered why your
high schooler was assigned to read
Barbara Ehrenreich’s anti-capitalist
screed “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not)
Getting By in America” for a high school
economics class; or why your middle
schooler’s math book includes story
problems about sweatshops and unfair
labor practices, or why your first grader
was shown the anti-capitalist video “The
Story of Stuff ” to learn about the evils of
American consumerism, wonder no more.

Our children’s educational curriculum
has been hijacked by the Left. And those
“top-down,” unsubstantial Common
Core standards won’t stop them.

So what does this curriculum look
like? Glad you asked!

Literally millions of middle school
and high school students are taught the
late Howard Zinn’s socialist version of
American history, “A People’s History
of the United States.” Though the book
came out in 1980, it continues to gain
credibility and popularity—for example,
if you peruse course syllabi online, you’ll
see it’s used in many AP U.S. History
classes today, probably in part because
it’s listed as a resource for teachers to
consider at College Board’s (hey, sound
familiar?!) AP Central website. And
thanks to Hollywood leftists such as
Matt Damon, who spearheaded a 2009
video version of the book for PBS, “A
People’s History” has developed an even
wider popular audience.

Zinn encouraged teachers to “reexamine
the premises” on which they
taught social studies and history—and to
give them up and embrace the realization
that American history is best explained
by class and race conflict. It will not
come as a surprise that “Rethinking
Columbus” is based on Zinn’s retelling
of the European “invasion” of North
America from the perspective of the
Arawak Indians, as he did in “A People’s
History:”

“These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands
were much like Indians on the mainland,
who were remarkable (European
observers were to say again and again)
for their hospitality, their belief in
sharing. These traits did not stand
out in the Europe of the Renaissance,
dominated as it was by the religion of
popes, the government of kings, the
frenzy for money that marked Western
civilization and its first messenger to the
Americas, Christopher Columbus.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking:
“Social justice revisionist history” is bad,
but not new. But what if I were to tell you
about “social justice math?” Nope. It’s
not a joke.